I just used a video of Macbeth with my students. In spite of all the violence they are accustomed to in entertainment, they were taken aback by the beheading of Macbeth in this particular version and the idea of his head being lifted above a cheering crowd on a lance. I discussed with them the fact that in the eleventh century beheadings were not so uncommon and that there was, furthermore, Celtic mythology involving beheadings. Then I recalled for them the poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," which they had studied earlier.
While in these pieces of literature, as in other history (even biblical accounts with the beheading of John the Baptist), the beheading is literal, my discussion with my students brought me back to perhaps another meaning of the beheading game in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." This particular piece of literature is puzzling in some respects. Thought to have been written in the 14th century in the northwest of England by an unknown writer, it is at once a mingling of older Celtic mythological themes and a story of the initiation of a young knight. When I first read it, long ago, I found it interesting but confusing. In recent years I have studied it and come back to it again and again trying to explore all the possible symbolism in the story.
In this article, I want to focus on the main challenge facing Gawain after he faced the Green Knight in Arthur's court and watched him ride away with his severed head in his hands. Gawain was bound by his honor as a knight to face the Green Knight a year later and risk losing his own head. Clearly the Green Knight was not a mortal who could be killed by decapitation, as had been evidenced by the initial meeting in Arthur's court. But Gawain was.
In our current culture the expression of "losing one's head" is not literal but figurative. One loses not a part of the physical body but his clear thinking perhaps, reason, judgment. "Losing one's head" would be similar to being "out of one's mind" - another expression we may use loosely to indicate a person is acting in a way which generally isn't a rational and reasonable way of dealing with the situation.
What is the real meaning of the story of Sir Gawain's encounter with the Green Knight, who is clearly a symbolic figure based on the Green Man whose image appears across Europe carved into many old buildings, most notably, cathedrals. The Green Man is representative of the cyclic forces of nature, the dying and rising god. It is no mistake that the initial appearance of the character in the tale and the final showdown occur at the beginning of a new year with exactly one year in between. The real challenge Gawain faces is that of confronting and risking losing his head to his own instinctual nature. This is further borne out by the fact that prior to actually facing the Green Knight the second time, Gawain's chivalry is tested by seduction by a beautiful woman. It later turns out that the woman was the Green Knight's wife, and the seduction had been planned as part of the overall test.
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